The Semco Style stresses high performance and purpose by recognizing that people are central to achieving this. At the core of Semco Style lies the ultimate goal — impact, performance and happiness — which is based on three core beliefs:
DEMOCRACY
It is better to have everyone involved in making sure that the organization is in control instead of only top management.
COMMON SENSE
Simplifying and reducing the complexity of unnecessary bureaucracy by challenging procedures that can be removed or reviewed in order to bring more effectiveness to your teams.
ALIGNED SELF-INTEREST
When people are clear about their needs and beliefs, there can be better alignment between individual-, team- and company interests.
Semco Style describes its transformation strategy based on a very simple business philosophy:
“Give people the freedom, and over the long haul, their successes will far outnumber their failures.”
We believe that people who feel a sense of autonomy and purpose react quicker to change, are quicker learners, and innovate much faster. These people feel fulfilled at work and are able to enhance their environment to impact the sustainable growth of the company.
We believe in ‘practice what you preach’ and want to have an impact, consistently improve performance, and have happy, engaged colleagues ourselves. We give each other freedom, working towards a shared goal. Having clarity is essential to make an impact and be successful. For people to be autonomous and take responsibility, it’s important they understand the ‘boundaries for action’ and know where individual and team responsibilities lie. This clarity comes through in the Semco Style Culture Code, which is a culture code on how to work together as teams within an organization.
We see the paradox between freedom, ownership, responsibility, and extensive guidelines, but we also know from experience that you can only take responsibility when the ‘playground’ is clear. With freedom comes a lot of responsibility, and with this Semco Style Culture Code, we aim for alignment on how to best achieve our goal. This happens by recognizing and making use of the talent we have and working together as a team. This document is not meant to be a ‘paper tiger’, but a statement on how we work together, what we want to achieve and how we can have the biggest impact on performance and happiness. This has become especially important in the new hybrid model of work, with team members spread across the world, and across multiple time zones.
We bring this document to life by incorporating the content into our work. We critically assess the document and revisit it at least once a year to ensure it is up to date. We believe in practicing what we preach, and constantly improving our performance while focusing on shaping the future of work.
Practices incorporated into this Semco Style Culture Code include: